Merry Christmas 2007

Hello and Merry Christmas,

Well it is a couple days before Christmas and Marla has been gently reminding me that "we" have yet to compose a holiday greeting to all of our family and friends. My defence has been that a message always has a greater impact the closer to the event it is received. However, that seems to be wearing thin so I've made a trade, she wraps, I write.

We've had a great 2007. On the the school front, Connor started kindergarten and is really into the whole school thing. He is a very serious student often giving Graeme advice about being prepared and following directions. Who would have thought that Connor was going to be the rule follower out of the two. I guess he just takes after his Dad in that respect. Graeme is having an awesome school year as well. We are continually amazed to watch his development as it seems everyday he is learning something knew and developing more and more independence. Marla is still counseling and got back into coaching volleyball this year with a coworker. I am back in the classroom teaching after quitting my admin job and it has been great. The downside is I am working much too hard but the upside is I am actually doing stuff I enjoy, except for marking. I HATE MARKING!

Graeme decided not to play hockey this year and is playing basketball instead. He's been enjoying it and there's no 6 am basketball practices so that is a big plus. I thought I might even get a break from coaching since I have never played basketball but funny it didn't seem to work out like that. Both Graeme and Connor are also getting big into soccer playing outdoor and indoor this year. Marla and I ran a few running races this summer and had a great time. Marla has actually been really good about running right into the winter while I have pretty much shut down since the snow came. Marla is still playing volleyball but will need to take some time off as she just had major knee surgery this week. The doctor says 6 weeks on crutches but Marla figures she will be good to go after Christmas. She calls it optimism, I call it stubbornness.

We are heading back to Mexico again this year at spring break but instead of Sayulita we are heading to Tronconnes. Sayulita, the last two years, has been fantastic but the price of things has gone crazy so on the advice of some friends we are going to head to Tronconnes. Shouldn't be too tough of an adjustment as they have all the essentials, a beach and cold Pacifico. Really, we are not too particular about time off as it seems like the boys are at the ages that regardless of what we do or where we go we have a great time. It will be the last year we have a two week spring break for awhile so we felt we better take advantage of it.

Life has been good for the Lewis' and we hope this Christmas season finds all of our friends and family in good health and good spirits. While we may not always be the best at keeping up with all of you we would like you to know that we think of you often and value you as part of our lives.

Happy Holidays,

Love the Lewis'

Swimming up Stream (or is it sitting in the shallows)

Oh ya, once again my traditional ways have outlasted the trends as I opened the paper today to see an article about people turning away from Facebook. (You can read the entire article here.) Well, I am glad to say that just like my resistance to acid wash in the 80's my reluctance to be trendy has served me well. As you can see on July 20th of this year I posted the same complaints with Facebook on this very blog. Now, I just have to wait for this whole tattoo thing to blow and my pasty white, ink free skin will become the hottest thing since desert boots.

A month and a half in

Well, it's mid October and I am a month and a half back into my new old career again. Since I have gone back to the classroom from admin people are always asking me how it is going and really the only answer I have been able to give is FANTASTIC! It's great to feel like I'm working in education again as opposed to managing the behaviour of children and adults who chose to act like children. My only real regret is that I agonized over the decision when I knew in my heart it was the right thing for me to do. it has been a great experience to see my school, students and staff from the classroom and compare it to my perspective from the office. I must say, the view is definitely better from the classroom. However, the best part of my career change come not at work but at home when I sit around the dinner table with my family and we discuss how our days went. Instead of being frustrated about discipline cases, mind-numbing supervision, or mundane scheduling tasks I tell my sons about the neat lesson we did in class or the goofy thing some grade 11 did. My sons get to see me enjoying school as a place of learning and social interaction. Sure there are still frustrations but they are now sidebars in my day surrounded by learning. I don't regret my time in admin as I believe it has made me a better educator by giving me a broader perspective and it has definitely allowed me to return my focus to the classroom instead of looking out and wondering what else there is.

Me and Jacques

So I found out last night that Jacques Demers would be visiting my school this afternoon with the Minister of Education to support a new literacy initiative in B.C. Of Course being a big Montreal Canadiens fan and having grown up watching Jacques Demers coach in the NHL I quickly talked to my principal and "invited" my class to the presentation. It was great to shake hands and get a photo with the man who pulled off the greatest coaching move in Stanley Cup history when in 1993 he called the illegal stick penalty on Marty McSorley of the Los Angeles Kings during game 2 of the finals.

First Day of School

 

Well so starts another school year. This year is a special one, however, as I returned to the classroom but more importantly our youngest son started kindergarten. It is hard for my wife to imagine that both our little boys are in school and that daycare drop off and pick up is no longer part of our daily routine. The boys had a great first day, as did my wife and I, and we are off on a new stage of life. We can only hope this one is as fun as the last.

Cause it feels good!

Over the years much has been said and written about the Mac vs PC debate. I could go on and on about the benefits and shortcomings of each platform here and certainly you would not see anything you haven't read elsewhere ad nauseam and almost certainly it wouldn't change your mind as to your preference. Most times the choice to go with a Mac or a PC boils down to what you have used in the past and are familiar with and/or how good a previous experience you have had with a particular brand. For my own part I have flipped back and forth using friends PCs or Macs, whatever was available at 2 in the morning as I was scrambling to get and assignment done for a 8 am deadline, during my early university days. My first computer purchase was a PC. Despite the fact that I had always preferred the "feel" of the MAC I was seduced by the compatibility and the lower price of the PC, plus my dad could get me a bunch of free software from his work. This was pre-internet days and really after university was finished I did not had a whole lot of use for a computer other than wasting a few hours every once in a while on Civilization. When I started teaching several years later the school I was at had a few old Macs and I had a chance to reacquaint myself with the platform. As the new iMacs came out and the price came down I decided to go with a Mac the next time I bought a computer, plus I also could get a bunch of free software from work. I have been very happy with my iMac and it is still being used by my kids. During the time I had this machine the internet exploded and the ease and functionality of Mac's iLife products really won me over. Then a couple years ago I changed jobs and was also back at university taking my master's. I needed a laptop and despite being very happy with my iMac and iBook I decided to by a PC laptop. The job I was taking and the school I was at used PCs so I decided to go with compatibility, plus I could get free software for the PC from my new school. The laptop has been a good machine and despite a few maintenance issues, thank god for extended warranties, it has preformed very well. I have found that with a little searching I can find applications to do what iLife did for me and I have enjoyed not having to worry about compatibility issues. Back on the Mac side, the other day a friend of mine lent me his MacBook for a few days. I must say, even though I am preforming the same task as on my PC laptop I am enjoying the look and feel of the Mac once again. As I was playing around making a website with iWeb it dawned on me, why use a Mac? Because it feels good and in this day and age isn't that enough. Everywhere we turn we are confronted with death and destruction, global warming, rising costs, decay of the family unit, unwinnable wars ........ so if we are going to be inundated with email for Viagra and the next can't miss stock option shouldn't we at least enjoy it. My PC has some life left in it but when the time comes I may just break from my tradition of following free software and go with what feels good.

Island Life

 

Well my family and I have been lucky enough to spend the week at my friend Val's place on Gabriola Island. I have never been on any of the Gulf Islands and I find myself asking what the hell have I been doing? It is quite spectacular here, not to mention Val's place is located on Killer Whale Lookout, how cool, and you actually look right out on the ocean from the living room. It made it a little distracting, however, to try and watch a movie last night as my wife and I kept looking out the window to watch the Otter's play on the rocks.

Dark Rider

 

Well Connor succumbed to the pressure of his cousins this weekend and took off his training wheels. Of course in typical Connor fashion he found it necessary to where his ninja tights, Zoro cape and brandish his double swords just in case he came across any bad guys.

Facebook Shmacebook

Alright my wife is now a part of the Facebook nation so I took a look to see what it is all about. I have to say I don't see myself facebooking any time soon. The idea of people "poking" me, messages about people's moods filling my screen, receiving emails alerting me to the fact that someone has left me a message on Facebook and generally calling people friends that I had little or nothing to do with in the real world is just too much pressure for me. Now some people may find my attitude towards Facebook surprising considering the fact that I have a blog I regularly update and share thousands of pictures on Flickr. However, the difference to me is that I really don't care if people access those sites or not. I mean I put things out there in the hope that friends and family who would like to keep up with the activity of our family can feel better connected but the whole point is I don't have the time or interest in communicating with everyone individually. The few times I have looked at my wife's Facebook page I get the distinct sensation of a phone that just will not quit ringing and my head begins to hurt. Now don't get me wrong I have no problem with people who are into Facebook. I just find it kinda interesting that people feel the need to "force" their messages onto others but won't actually just send someone and email. It is great if people get a chance to reconnect to people from their past, however, just a caution sometimes you find out there is a reason you lost contact with those people. Now I am not sure if anyone will read this or not as I don't know if anyone visits this blog and nor do I care I feel better just for writing it. Now I must give up the computer as my wife wants to check her Facebook.

The Pressure of Summer

Well, we are heading into the third week of summer and it seems like time is flying by. I can't believe how little it feels like I have accomplished but at the same time it doesn't feel like I have slipped into my vacation routine yet and I beginning to get a little anxious. Now I know people out there who are not teachers are rolling their eyes and mentally wrapping their hands around my neck for whining about how fast three weeks go when we still have another five of holidays ahead of us but trust me the pressure is enormous. I mean I have a mental list of jobs around the house and cabin that I want to get completed plus I have a stack of books to read, a bunch of hobbies to get a kick start on, an exercise routine to begin, places to visit and explore around BC, family to visit, dinner parties, BBQs, kids summer camps. There just never seems enough time and the list just keeps going so I am sure you can see having the summer off is not as easy as it seems. In fact just writing about it has got me wound up. I think I better have another cup of coffee, before I go for a run and begin loading the truck for the lake.

The Graduate

 

Hard to believe that my little boy is already a pre-school graduate. If it wasn't for my youthful appearance I would start to think I was getting old.

Story Time

Never to young to be read to, Graeme reads a story to his brother and cousin.

Finally a Lewis is published

In speaking with my son's grade 2 teacher it seems as if Graeme, in place of doing his math work, decided to write the following story about a boy who eats his math book. Well instead of getting in trouble his teacher thought it was quite funny and has published it in the yearbook.

Le garçon qui aime less livres

Il y a un garçon qui aime manger des livres.
Cela a commence quand il fait ses maths.
Il ne sait pas bien les maths, alors il mange
page de maths. Après, il mange une
grosse, grosse phrase, et après ça, il mange
tout un livre. Mais toutes les pages du livre
se sont mélangées dans son estomac. Il était
triste parce que quand il parle, il dit :
« Ba +He +Ke + 7 = eliblablabla. »

Graeme Lewis

La fin

A New Old Direction

Well as another school year comes to an end I am preparing for a shift in my career direction again. I have resigned from my administration position and I am heading back to where I started, the classroom teaching social studies. I decided earlier this year that after years of university education gaining my Bachelor of Education and Master of Educational Technology degrees that I had strayed too far from the education side of schooling and too close to the management side. It has been a tough year in many respects as I struggled with the decision to quit, I am sure Marla would share with you how annoying I was as I worked through everything in my mind. While I am very excited, happy and proud of my decision it did not come easy. In a society that values promotion and views success as how much money a person makes it is easy to let your ego drive decisions. However, the more I examined the reasons that I went into education in the first place the more I realized I had moved farther and farther from those reasons over the last two years. Clarity was really brought to the situation when my son asked me one night at dinner as we talked about our day "How many kids did you suspend today dad?" I thought back to the days when I was teaching and he used to hang out with me in my classroom on the weekends as I was prepping for lessons and decided I liked the idea of my children knowing me as a teacher better than as an administrator. Besides, as I told Marla, it is hard to reconcile an ideology of "screw the man and his stupid rules" with actually being "the man". I am looking forward to next year as I have decided to remain at PGSS and will have an opportunity to get back to what I love, teaching social studies. Who knows what the future will bring but for know I can rest easy in the knowledge that I got in on my own terms and I am going out on my own terms.

Air Mexico

My son and I went on a little zip line adventure in the hills of Sayulita. Here he is flying across the third zip line. You can tell by his very cool "good" at the end of the clip that he figures he is an old hand at this jungle flying.

The office memo that ate the world

Have you ever noticed how the convience of email and the ability to communicate with family and friends from all around the world quickly and cheaply has been turned into nothing more than a glorified office memo. Personally I work in a position with just enough authority that people feel it necessary to cc me on pretty much every friggin email they can conjure up. Everything from, the city informing god knows who about the city facitilites that have been booked for the upcoming week to parents asking for homework for their children to messages to the custodians complaining the waste paper basket still has a piece of scrap paper in it from the previous day. What is worse than getting all of the mundane messages that actually pertain to you...? It is getting cc'd in on mundane messages that don't pertain to you and in most cases relate to people or events that you don't have a clue about. Now one could argue that my recieveing these messages should be taken as a clue that I should actually get invlolved and try and figure out how they do involve me. I rather take them as a challenge in creating mail rules that will allow my junk mail filter to block them. On top of getting all of these messages is the fact that we get sucked into using your email account for nothing more than work related crap. While we constantly lament the lack of time we have to keep in contact with people important to us and how our busy lives leave us with little motivation to send out those christmas cards from last December we always seem to have time to send out the latest email to our colleagues clarifiying the previous email that was sent as an explaination of the instructions to the original email. When our total misuse of this great technology truely hits you is when you go on vacation like I have this week. During a typical work day I will receive approxiamtely 175 messages a day. While I have been on holiday that number has dropped to 4 a day with three of those having to do with ways to improve my manhood but that is a different post. Why do you ask am I writing about this, well I think we should take back control of our email accounts and refuse to read or send work related messages after 7 pm. If you have something to say at that time you should go talk to your family and leave the work stuff for the morning. I also think we need to quit the ccing. If the message is not important enough to the person to warrant them to be included in the addressees then they don't need it sent to them. They are probably not reading it anyway so save yourself the trouble. Most importantly, use your email for what it should be, a powerful way to stay in contact with those people who are important to you. That is all I have to say about that. now to get back to those emails about my manhood.

camera man

camera man
Originally uploaded by kinglewy.

I recently gave my older son a cheap little digital camera and he has taken to photography. He has already graduated to a little better model with a zoom. It is great to see him laying on the ground or climbing on the rocks to try and get the shot he wants. It is even better to look at the photos after and get a little glimpse into how he sees the world. This shot is of him taking pictures of the Iguanas in Sayulita. To see his pictures of our spring break in Sayulita click http://www.flickr.com/photos/kinglewy/sets/72157600044177141/

Anticipation......

Well, we are only 2 sleeps away from being on the beach sipping Pacifico in Sayulita and everyone is getting pretty excited. We have had an awesome winter but it will be great to sit back, unplug the phone and email and read a few books while enjoying the sun. I wonder how Connor is going to react when he figures out we didn't pack his "warmy" pants and gum boots. Current weather in Sayulita 32 degrees.

Choirboy

Footage of my son in his first choir recital. Ok, it is pretty boring stuff unless you are related but then again isn't that what blogs are all about.

4 yr old career counseling

Do you ever notice that kid are much more interesting than adults. My 4 yr old son was driving with my wife the other day and a song was playing that included the line "Would you be the saviour of the broken?" My son asked my wife what a saviour was and she explained to him that it was a person who helped people. He asked if they helped homeless, sick and poor people and wife told him yes. My son then thought for a while and said that he would like to be a saviour when he grew up. My wife told him that would be a great idea as it is very important to help people. He then remained quiet for quite a while and my wife could see him in the rear view mirror deep in thought. After a few minutes my son said he had a problem because he wanted to be a saviour but he also wanted to be a Ninja and it is hard to be two things. In fact, he also wanted to be Batman so that would be hard and he would have to think about it because he would like to help poor people and homeless people or people who were lost in long grass because you know people who are in long grass get scared because they can't see were to go. He thought he might have to talk to his brother to see what he thinks so it should be interesting to see where this goes. I'm just glad my wife wasn't listening to If I had a Rocket Launcher.

The Iceman Cometh

 

Well, a couple of weeks ago my wife and I joined another couple and decided to throw a team in the Iceman competition. The Iceman is a unique northern athletic event that consists of an 8 km cross-country ski, 10 km run, 5 K skate, 5 km run and an 800 m swim. It is a fantastic event that really brings together the community. We had a great time even if we were not the most prepared team. We are looking forward to next year and we may just even do a little training beforehand.

Missing Mexico

As we are deep into winter and looking forward to heading back to Sayulita in April I thought I put together some shots from last year. A warning, this is pretty boring stuff except for the boys who can watch themselves over and over and over and over ...

Bubbalicious

Ok, this is cool and don't lie you would all like to give it a try.

Pass the Prozac

Ever wonder why you sometimes get that sinking feeling or the people around you seem a little gloomy and on edge. After a century of living the good life, scarfing down fast food, driving gas guzzling muscle cars, building houses, resorts, bridges and generally shaping the land and taking from it anything we chose we are now facing the global hangover of a 100 year party. How is this reflected in our moods? Look no further than our entertainment choices in recent years. While in the 80's and 90's we could unwind with Crocket and Tubbs for a hour as they chased drug smugglers and bikini clad babes around Miami now we tune into some guy who decides to eat MacDonald's for a month straight and point out how we are slowly killing ourselves through a lack of nutrition and overindulgence. We used to tune in weekly to the Dukes of Hazard to see if just maybe Daisy Dukes shorts would ride up that extra quarter inch. Now we tune into Michael Moore's latest shockumentary to see how corporate America is pillaging our communities, or how the president fixed the election, or how or culture is turning young people into killers. Take your pick they all follow pretty much the same story line, we're f****ed. Gone are the feel good days of Richie, Fonzie, Potsie and the gang. Today we are stuck with Franky, Bubbles and the rest of the Trailer Park Boys. No wonder we are a little down. Universal health care is under siege, the education system is in need of reform, nightly we watch highlights of wars we cannot win, we don't recycle enough, we spend too much, our children are too fat and stupid, our pension plans will be bankrupt before we can claim them. If you do happen to feel good about your life then you have pangs of guilt about not being concerned enough about the future. All I can say it is a good thing I had the foresight to tape then entire last season of Magnum PI so that whenever I get that sinking feeling I put on my Tigers cap and take a little trip back in time.

An Inconvenient Truth

Well my wife and I finally got around to watching the Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth and I must say it was time well spent. At first I was not really all that sold on the idea of watching a film with a "moral" message from the right hand man of a president who thought of his secretary as a cigar holder or whose wife had petitioned so vehemently against those icons of my youth Judas Priest. However, to my surprise film was very entertaining and educational. Al Gore comes across earnestly and without the air of a past vice-president just milking the post administration pay check. The film uses just enough science to be convincing and informative without making the viewer thing he his watching a re-run of the Nature of Things. Overall the film delivers a compelling call to arms for all of us, especially in North America, to get off our butts and start taking care of the land the has so efficiently looked after us before it is too late. Of course, the downside is that I am now filled with guilt every time my furnace kicks in and when my kids start to complain about the cold I find myself lecturing them about how cold it is going to be when we bring about the next ice age.